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The sexy stories and wise advice of 1940s Nigeria and more of our favorite new books.

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August 20, 2001 10:12PM (UTC)

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Life Turns Man Up and Down: High Life, Useful Advice and Mad English, edited by Kurt Thometz "This pamphlet is the best pamphlet so far written and compiled in order to expose the faults of human being, his difficulties and so on and so forth," wrote Okenwa Olisah, "the strong man of the pen." Olisah might have been a farmer or a taxi driver, but he was also one of a handful of Nigerians whose worldly advice, erotic fiction and moral ponderings were published and sold at Onitsha markets from the 1940s to the 1960s. Onitsha was reputed to be the largest market town in sub-Saharan Africa -- where a slaving outpost, the Royal Africa Company and the Catholic Church once converged.

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Next to stalls of yams, Spanish whiskey and Indian hemp, these small pamphlets of entertaining popular literature (written in a 400-year-old pidgin English) sold like wildfire. (Now they are collectors' items.) This anthology, "Life Turns Man Up and Down: High Life, Useful Advice and Mad English," displays these often funny and always fascinating artifacts -- sexy stories like "Why Harlots Hate Married Men and Love Bachelors" and "Why I Killed My White Lover" to more contemplative offerings like "Sayings of the Wise" and a play called "The Statements of Hitler Before the World War." These chapbooks have the spirit of creativity, exuberance and adventure of a popular forum that offered an exchange of ideas and desires for every man.

-- Suzy Hansen

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